Saudi Arabia

Wahhabi Theology

The political and cultural environment of contemporary Saudi
Arabia has been influenced by a religious movement that began in
central Arabia in the mid-eighteenth century. This movement,
commonly known as the Wahhabi movement, grew out of the
scholarship and preaching of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, a
scholar of Islamic jurisprudence who had studied in Mesopotamia
and the Hijaz before returning to his native Najd to preach his
message of Islamic reform.

Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab was concerned with the way the
people of Najd engaged in practices he considered polytheistic,
such as praying to saints; making pilgrimages to tombs and
special mosques; venerating trees, caves, and stones; and using
votive and sacrificial offerings. He was also concerned by what
he viewed as a laxity in adhering to Islamic law and in
performing religious devotions, such as indifference to the
plight of widows and orphans, adultery, lack of attention to
obligatory prayers, and failure to allocate shares of inheritance
fairly to women.

When Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab began to preach against these
breaches of Islamic laws, he characterized customary practices as
jahiliya, the same term used to describe the ignorance of
Arabians before the Prophet. Initially, his preaching encountered
opposition, but he eventually came under the protection of a
local chieftain named Muhammad ibn Saud, with whom he formed an
alliance. The endurance of the Wahhabi movement's influence may
be attributed to the close association between the founder of the
movement and the politically powerful Al Saud in southern Najd
(see The Saud Family and Wahhabi Islam, 1500-1818
, ch. 1).

This association between the Al Saud and the Al ash Shaykh,
as Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab and his descendants came to be
known, effectively converted political loyalty into a religious
obligation. According to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's teachings,
a Muslim must present a bayah, or oath of allegiance, to a
Muslim ruler during his lifetime to ensure his redemption after
death. The ruler, conversely, is owed unquestioned allegiance
from his people so long as he leads the community according to
the laws of God. The whole purpose of the Muslim community is to
become the living embodiment of God's laws, and it is the
responsibility of the legitimate ruler to ensure that people know
God's laws and live in conformity to them.

Muhammad ibn Saud turned his capital, Ad Diriyah, into a
center for the study of religion under the guidance of Muhammad
ibn Abd al Wahhab and sent missionaries to teach the reformed
religion throughout the peninsula, the gulf, and into Syria and
Mesopotamia. Together they began a jihad against the backsliding
Muslims of the peninsula. Under the banner of religion and
preaching the unity of God and obedience to the just Muslim
ruler, the Al Saud by 1803 had expanded their dominion across the
peninsula from Mecca to Bahrain, installing teachers, schools,
and the apparatus of state power. So successful was the alliance
between the Al ash Shaykh and the Al Saud that even after the
Ottoman sultan had crushed Wahhabi political authority and had
destroyed the Wahhabi capital of Ad Diriyah in 1818, the reformed
religion remained firmly planted in the settled districts of
southern Najd and of Jabal Shammar in the north. It would become
the unifying ideology in the peninsula when the Al Saud rose to
power again in the next century.

Central to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's message was the
essential oneness of God (tawhid). The movement is
therefore known by its adherents as ad dawa lil tawhid
(the call to unity), and those who follow the call are known as
ahl at tawhid (the people of unity) or muwahhidun
(unitarians). The word Wahhabi was originally used
derogatorily by opponents, but has today become commonplace and
is even used by some Najdi scholars of the movement.

Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's emphasis on the oneness of God
was asserted in contradistinction to shirk, or polytheism,
defined as the act of associating any person or object with
powers that should be attributed only to God. He condemned
specific acts that he viewed as leading to shirk, such as
votive offerings, praying at saints' tombs and at graves, and any
prayer ritual in which the suppliant appeals to a third party for
intercession with God. Particularly objectionable were certain
religious festivals, including celebrations of the Prophet's
birthday, Shia mourning ceremonies, and Sufi mysticism.
Consequently, the Wahhabis forbid grave markers or tombs in
burial sites and the building of any shrines that could become a
locus of shirk.

The extensive condemnation of shirk is seen in the
movement's iconoclasm, which persisted into the twentieth
century, most notably with the conquest of At Taif in the Hijaz.
A century earlier, in l802, Wahhabi fighters raided and damaged
one of the most sacred Shia shrines, the tomb of Husayn, the son
of Imam Ali and grandson of the Prophet, at Karbala in Iraq. In
1804 the Wahhabis destroyed tombs in the cemetery of the holy men
in Medina, which was a locus for votive offerings and prayers to
the saints.

Following the legal school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Wahhabi ulama
accept the authority only of the Quran and sunna. The Wahhabi
ulama reject reinterpretation of Quran and sunna in regard to
issues clearly settled by the early jurists. By rejecting the
validity of reinterpretation, Wahhabi doctrine is at odds with
the Muslim reformation movement of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. This movement seeks to reinterpret parts of
the Quran and sunna to conform with standards set by the West,
most notably standards relating to gender relations, family law,
and participatory democracy. However, ample scope for
reinterpretation remains for Wahhabi jurists in areas not decided
by the early jurists. King Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud has
repeatedly called for scholars to engage in ijtihad to
deal with new situations confronting the modernizing kingdom.

The Wahhabi movement in Najd was unique in two respects:
first, the ulama of Najd interpreted the Quran and sunna very
literally and often with a view toward reinforcing parochial
Najdi practices; second, the political and religious leadership
exercised its collective political will to enforce conformity in
behavior. Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab asserted that there were
three objectives for Islamic government and society; these
objectives have been reaffirmed over the succeeding two centuries
in missionary literature, sermons,
fatwa (from Glossary: An authoritative legal interpretation by a mufti or religious jurist that can provide the basis for court decision or government action.)
rulings, and in Wahhabi explications of religious doctrine.
According to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab the objectives were "to
believe in Allah, enjoin good behavior, and forbid wrongdoing."

Under Al Saud rule, governments, especially during the
Wahhabi revival in the 1920s, have shown their capacity and
readiness to enforce compliance with Islamic laws and
interpretations of Islamic values on themselves and others. The
literal interpretations of what constitutes right behavior
according to the Quran and hadith have given the Wahhabis the
sobriquet of "Muslim Calvinists." To the Wahhabis, for example,
performance of prayer that is punctual, ritually correct, and
communally performed not only is urged but publicly required of
men. Consumption of wine is forbidden to the believer because
wine is literally forbidden in the Quran. Under the Wahhabis,
however, the ban extended to all intoxicating drinks and other
stimulants, including tobacco. Modest dress is prescribed for
both men and women in accordance with the Quran, but the Wahhabis
specify the type of clothing that should be worn, especially by
women, and forbid the wearing of silk and gold, although the
latter ban has been enforced only sporadically. Music and dancing
have also been forbidden by the Wahhabis at times, as have loud
laughter and demonstrative weeping, particularly at funerals.

The Wahhabi emphasis on conformity makes of external
appearance and behavior a visible expression of inward faith.
Therefore, whether one conforms in dress, in prayer, or in a host
of other activities becomes a public statement of whether one is
a true Muslim. Because adherence to the true faith is
demonstrable in tangible ways, the Muslim community can visibly
judge the quality of a person's faith by observing that person's
actions. In this sense, public opinion becomes a regulator of
individual behavior. Therefore, within the Wahhabi community,
which is striving to be the collective embodiment of God's laws,
it is the responsibility of each Muslim to look after the
behavior of his neighbor and to admonish him if he goes astray.

To ensure that the community of the faithful will "enjoin
what is right and forbid what is wrong," morals enforcers known
as mutawwiin (literally, "those who volunteer or obey")
have been integral to the Wahhabi movement since its inception.
Mutawwiin have served as missionaries, as enforcers of
public morals, and as "public ministers of the religion" who
preach in the Friday mosque. Pursuing their duties in Jiddah in
1806, the mutawwiin were observed to be "constables for
the punctuality of prayers . . . with an enormous staff in their
hand, [who] were ordered to shout, to scold and to drag people by
the shoulders to force them to take part in public prayers, five
times a day." In addition to enforcing male attendance at public
prayer, the mutawwiin also have been responsible for
supervising the closing of shops at prayer time, for looking out
for infractions of public morality such as playing music,
smoking, drinking alcohol, having hair that is too long (men) or
uncovered (women), and dressing immodestly.

In the first quarter of the century, promoting Wahhabism was
an asset to Abd al Aziz in forging cohesion among the tribal
peoples and districts of the peninsula. By reviving the notion of
a community of believers, united by their submission to God,
Wahhabism helped to forge a sense of common identity that was to
supersede parochial loyalties. By abolishing the tribute paid by
inferior tribes to militarily superior tribes, Abd al Aziz
undercut traditional hierarchies of power and made devotion to
Islam and to himself as the rightly guided Islamic ruler the glue
that would hold his kingdom together. In the early 1990s, unity
in Islam of the Muslim umma (community) under Al Saud
leadership was the basis for the legitimacy of the Saudi state.

The promotion of Islam as embracing every aspect of life
accounted in large measure for the success of Wahhabi ideology in
inspiring the zealotry of the Ikhwan movement. Beginning in 1912,
agricultural communities called hujra (collective pl.)
were settled by beduin who came to believe that in settling on
the land they were fulfilling the prerequisite for leading Muslim
lives; they were making a hijra, "the journey from the
land of unbelief to the land of belief." It is still unclear
whether the Ikhwan settlements were initiated by Abd al Aziz or
whether he co-opted the movement once it had begun, but the
settlements became military cantonments in the service of Abd al
Aziz's consolidation of power. Although the Ikhwan had very
limited success in agriculture, they could rely on a variety of
subsidies derived from raids under the aegis of Abd al Aziz and
provisions disbursed directly from his storehouses in Riyadh.

As newly converted Wahhabi Muslims, the Ikhwan were fanatical
in imposing their zealotry for correct behavior on others. They
enforced rigid separation of the sexes in their villages, for
example, and strict attention to prayers, and used violence in
attempting to impose Wahhabi restrictions on others. Their
fanaticism forged them into a formidable fighting force, and with
Ikhwan assistance, Abd al Aziz extended the borders of his
kingdom into the Eastern Province, Hail, and the Hijaz.
Ultimately, the fanaticism of the Ikhwan undermined their
usefulness, and they had to be reckoned with; the Ikhwan
Rebellion (1928-30) marked their eclipse
(see The Ikhwan Movement
, ch. 5).

In the 1990s, Saudi leadership did not emphasize its identity
as inheritor of the Wahhabi legacy as such, nor did the
descendants of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, the Al ash Shaykh,
continue to hold the highest posts in the religious bureaucracy.
Wahhabi influence in Saudi Arabia, however, remained tangible in
the physical conformity in dress, in public deportment, and in
public prayer. Most significantly, the Wahhabi legacy was
manifest in the social ethos that presumed government
responsibility for the collective moral ordering of society, from
the behavior of individuals, to institutions, to businesses, to
the government itself.